


Hello FlailKat

by cthchewy (pyrrhic_victoly), RainofLittleFishes



Series: Marginalia [1]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternia, Animated GIFs, Blingee, Business Managing Judicious Terrorlizard, Crack, Dank Memes, F/F, F/M, Flail!Kat, Illustrated, Karkat did not agree to this merchandising, M/M, MadameTerezi, Multi, Non-Con for Non-Consensual Photography and Publication of Another's Image, On Alternia You're Always Old Enough to Die - But we would call them minors, Original Character(s), Pale Porn, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Polyamory, Possible non-con, The Secret Life of Meta-Bees, Trollstuck, entrepreneurs, quadrant shenanigans, the return of Aradia's harem
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-16
Updated: 2016-11-27
Packaged: 2018-04-11 10:51:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 13,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4432733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pyrrhic_victoly/pseuds/cthchewy, https://archiveofourown.org/users/RainofLittleFishes/pseuds/RainofLittleFishes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Flailkat:</p><p>~(ˆò A óˆ)~</p><p>Sollux posts pictures of epic Karkat faces online, but what he intended to be funny is actually borderline pornographic. Oh shit...</p><p>...Oh well.  It's a good thing Terezi is there to help turn this sordid situation into a Legitimate Business.  This is a classy diamonds-only establishment.  Of the law.  And pre-order.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Y U NO 2HOO2HPAP

Aradia is FLARPing. Karkat is shouting. For Sollux’s overactive brain, the shouting is a good substitute distraction during his moirail’s absence, though at this point Sollux doesn’t even know what he’s shouting about. What was it this time? Was it “you’re so useless” or “I’m so useless”? Somewhere along the line they agree to a vidchat so that Sollux is greeted with Karkat’s shouty face in all its shouty glory, flailing and spasms included.

Sollux keeps telling him he just looks constipated and that just makes Karkat angrier. Flail. Flail.

Sollux does a screen capture of Karkat’s RageFace, names it shouty.grub, and uploads it to one of those meme generators along with a suitably raunchy caption. (Not his fault Karkat keeps making absurd porn faces at him.) 

He sends the result to Karkat. Flail. Flail.

The bees are sniggering, snacking on pollen granules as they watch the show.

He sends the result to the rest of the internet too, along with the bees’ fanart:

~(ˆò A óˆ)~

This is the emoticon that inspired cute-tastic tales of buoyant bubble-lusii. Sollux starts posting more pictures of epic Karkat faces online. There’s an official blog dedicated to “Shouty” featuring all off-the-handle Karkat. He quickly gains a following. 

The internet agrees that the nubbin horns are the best part of any flailkat pic. And that rage! So shooshable, so pappable. Flailkat has a palestruck fanclub and he doesn't even know. What Sollux intended to be funny is actually borderline pornographic. Oh shit. (Oh well. Still not his fault Karkat keeps making porn faces at him.)

Sollux has that "oh 2hiit, going to get caught" moment, then decides "eh, who care2?!" and blithely continues to post.

Terezi is the first in their friends group to find out what's going on. She blackmails him. (Only possible because Sollux still has no idea how he feels about almost any of his frenemies... besides conflicted.) Sollux finds himself mired in a variety of weird situations as a result...

Pre-dawn at the convenience store obtaining Troll Slurpies from the twin moppet lusii that run it. Blue cherry and red blueberry, all chemical versions of course. He wonders when Terezi will move out but doesn't dare ask. He could demand she leave, she probably would...

He can't quite make himself do it. He gets back to find her trying to feed the bees the last of his cheese curls. She makes him write her a program that "reads" text as tones. Not that she needs it. Not that she really *makes* him. Incessant chiming ensues.

He writes her a program to "read" the news accompanied by fancy gamegrub cartridges primed to spray the corresponding pheromones. The tricky part wasn't the algorithms for reading the news, it was the lifecode finessing to make the grubs each produce multiple pheromones... Individual grubs are way too expensive and take up too much room.

He doesn't notice when Smellovision takes off in the fleet and the royalties start to roll in. Sure, he hasn't had to scrape to eat more than noodles in a while, but Terezi's been ordering delivery and paying, and Sollux doesn't pay much attention to household finances. He brushes it aside as her version of “paying rent” with her higher Imperial Allowance. 

He's not exactly sure when Terezi stopped sleeping on the couch and got her own 'coon. Or when the massive dragon egg parked itself in the showerblock. Or when BiclopsDad took up yoga. Or when Aradia started kissing both of them when she came to visit. Or...

(He definitely notices when Karkat finds out. (Terezi has set up rights for Shouty!merchandise.))

Karkat finds out via hivemade Shouty fanstuff. (Terezi's deal with the Shouty merchandise manufacturer hasn’t quite gone through yet. Meanwhile, fans are impatient and have been crafting their own goods for a while.) Some tiny 4 sweep old girl is standing by the entrance to the local inconvenience store showing off her Shouty backback; her friend has a set of flail-flail-flail buttons pinned onto his cap.

Karkat's first instinct is to shout, but he holds his breath at the last minute because oh god what if they see? They're talking about how *dreamy* he is. The cashier smirks when Karkat goes to ring up his grubjuice and roe cubes. Douche.

Breath held for an impressively long time, Karkat is about to yell as soon as he gets back to his hive, but he sees Crabdad looking at him with so much love-you-love-you-love-you in his eyes that he tosses a pack of roe cubes, sucks in another breath, and takes the train to Sollux's. Karkat holds his breath five more times along the way, and let it be said that he has world-class lung capacity.

He's about to yell Sollux's brains out as soon as he kicks down the door to Nerd Palace, but instead of Sollux, Karkat is greeted with bee larvae wiggling themselves into cheese curl shapes (and one stoic dragon egg in the middle of them). Terezi preemptively shushes him. "We're having class," she says. She places another cheese curl in front of the gathered larvae. "Ooh, this one's gonna be hard!" They contort into little spirals.

WTF is Karkat's life, seriously. He can't even get his rage on properly...

He waits - patiently and only holding his breath three more times - until the larvae are back in their towers and Sollux has emerged from his latest coding binge. Then the yelling begins.


	2. One lump or two?

Sollux is currently inhabiting a strange sort of existential plane in which he can hear every word that falls from Karkat’s angry shouting nubby-toothed mouth and can see every flail and Terezi’s gargoyle grin, but all he can think is, “yes, work it, just like that”.

The mobile camera drones that Aradia obtained from Equius click and whir and zoom to get the best shots. He leaves one to his preprogrammed algorithms and guides the other with psionics. He’s going to need another two for video. This is comedic and porny gold. Karkat gets all up in his face and what happens next is instinctive. He reaches out and paps him. On the cheek. Twice. Pap. Pap.

Karkat flails. His shouty maw closes, opens, closes. His eyes are wide. Terezi cracks open a new bag of freeze-dried antlerworms and lets the bees get first pick.

Karkat opens his mouth and nothing comes out. His gray-irised eyes are wide and startled. Terezi cackles. The bees hum. Karkat falls over backwards like a massive woody plant under a lumbering combustible and building harvester and it’s like Sollux wakes up. Oh 2hiit. He wasn’t actually in danger. He doesn’t know what he was thinking. He didn’t mean to violate a frenemy. Friend. Frond. Oh Beesus.

"Congratulations," Terezi says, "you've ruined your chances with your pale crush and possibly garnered his immortal ire, of the unhealthy variety. Do you need an auspistice?"

Sollux stands frozen above the fallen no-longer-Shouty. "Pale... crush...?"

Terezi shakes her head. "You need to practice self-awareness."

A helpful bee reminds Sollux that he might want to move the body away from the camera drones still snapping away. He manages to float Karkat over to the couch before crippling guilt settles in.

Sollux then proceeds to mope his way into the respiteblock and mope his way into a little ball tucked away in the corner. A useless lump of bad decisions and douchebaggery that refuses to take responsibility for his actions... so says Karkat.

While Sollux was out of commission, his bees took it upon themselves to snap pictures of him being pathetic in order to return to Karkat's good graces. Terezi took it upon herself to explain the situation so far and to show him the Shouty merchandise contract.

Karkat, after his first good papping in probably forever, is reluctantly calm after his return from log imitation. No shouting occurs, though he manages to wrangle the biggest chunk of the merchandise contract for himself, to be paid in roe cubes because a certain fatass who shall not be named goes through them like a wiggler through its first Behemoth leaving.

Among Karkat's contract stipulations are demands for Shouty to be sold only in conjunction with Useless Lump, the newest pity sensation to hit the interwebs.


	3. someone is wwrong on the internet

**Perigees in the past, but not many:**

Dave has been feeling down about things for the past few nights. Despite pretending to be the epitome of unflappable cool to his adoring internet fans and the world as a whole, he is in fact very flappable. As flappable as a flapbeast, like his giant goddamn lusus.

“Talk to me, CrowBro. Give it to me straight up – when I eventually get my rustbucket ass culled, is there even the slightest chance that my idiot friends won’t flip their shit so badly that they get their royal asses culled too?”

“Caw!” says CrowBro. This translates as “hell no”.

Dave purses his lips. “Wow. Just what I wanted to hear.”

“Caw ca-caw!” _Truth hurts. Suck it up, wiggler. Who told you to go around papping fish and clowns anyway?_

Le sigh. It’s hard having three coldblood moirails. It’s hard and nobody understands. Seriously. There’s no way any other troll on the face of Alternia could understand what it’s like to have to 3x shooshpap combo two clown cultists and a fish princess just because someone thought it was a good idea to threaten the fourth member of their mutually shared poly pale papfest.

Dave tosses some frozen squeakbeasts to his lusus even though it’s not like the feathery asshole needs any help hunting. He waves goodbye to CrowBro and the other lusus who shares his rooftop perch – that two-headed thing, BiclopsDad? He’ll have to ask BiclopsDad’s wiggler what his lusus would like for a ‘thanks for providing the eye lasers in my rooftop death duel with bro’ gift.

He keeps his bad mood until he gets back to his hive and boots up the husktop. It’s been a couple of nights since he updated his blog, and his followers are starting to ask about his absence. Dave’s grateful to have some mindless meme-trawling to do in order to find fresh content for his blog. Most of the stuff he finds isn’t even worth making fun of, but then… Then he finds _true art_. He finds Shouty.

He expresses his love for Shouty through shitty quality manips, which – as anyone who knows Dave would know – is some serious love. Everything he says in his shitty image posts are true, because true irony involves sincerity.

He links to Shouty and tells everyone he knows how great it is. He contacts TA, the original poster of the Shouty pic, telling him how he definitely needs to post more Shouty, make a Shouty blog, “no really ill even give you my followers please have them all the world needs shouty”.

Thus Shouty’s fanclub is born.

 

**Be another fan in the present:**

Eridan Ampora boots up his husktop and immediately logs in to his favorite site. The doors are locked. The traps are set. The window coverings are drawn. He loosens his scarf and lets his automatic sign-in charge his account.

Yes. There’s a new Shouty upload, and not just pics but video, if no sound. Eridan was a Shouty fan before it was popular. He refuses to let the rush of so many plebs into his interest push him out. He imagines what Shouty would sound like, loud, maybe husky. He must purr pretty loud too.

Eridan lets his hand run over his cheek and into his hair, tries not to think about directing it. He closes his eyes for a moment and he imagines that the lines of pressure over his scalp are not his own fingers but someone else’s. He imagines Feferi for a moment, and can almost hear her giggle. It’s not hard to imagine the salt smell of her. He imagines mirroring the touch with Shouty, wonders what his real name is. His unruly mind insists on wondering how many trolls are currently imagining exactly what he is. He pulls at his hair until it hurts and opens his eyes. Never mind, he’ll have to work to get into the mood.

He watches the video several times, pausing and replaying when it tries to cycle to someone else, a thin pitiable warmblood with doubled horns. Finally, he lets the video play all the way through, and feels his hands clench and release, fingers fluttering with his sleeve-pinned diamond feelings. “Useless Lump” is adorable. Shouty is clearly the type of troll that needs pacification. Useless Lump is clearly the type of troll that needs preventative maintenance. Lots of maintenance. Probably even reminders to eat. A bath. Someone to brush his hair, clip and file his nails into more than just default snaggle talons. UL is utterly passive, like a doll.

He wonders if UL is scrawny because his lusus was one of his own victims. Scrawny. Not dead. It would be weird but not impossible if he was the cause of UL’s hapless state. He kind of hopes it’s not his fault, that would make this fantasy pretty sordid. This is a fantasy, but it’s not a tawdry bucket-tipper. No one really falls in love with the rapist corsair, no matter how dashing and highblooded, no matter how many tropes he and Kar chuck at one another. No one would really fall pale with their lusus’s executioner. A good moirail never hurts their diamond without a really good reason. He’s not always a good moirail. He’s actually frequently not. He seethes between “Feferi is great, I’m just not enough” and “Why can’t she _see?_ ”. That’s okay, seadwellers are supposed to be as changeable as the tides.

Eridan can cook. He wields a mean hairbrush too, though UL doesn’t look like he needs any braiding. He’s so tiny, all bird bones. Eridan could scoop him up with one arm and still have one free to pet his face. Oh, horrorterrors, he’s even more obsessed than he is with Shouty. This. This… there have to be limits, he tells himself. Fantasy is fine. Obsession is bad. A traitorous thought tells him that he should confess everything to Feferi and maybe she’d pap him again. He pushes it away. The point here is not his dysfunctional moirallegiance. He tried to lean flush in the pile, he’s on probation, he gets it.

A hand enters the frame and pokes UL twice. He can recognize Shouty’s every finger, the thin scars distinct. UL twitches and sparks, shuffles a little closer as if reluctant, or scared. UL is a minor psionic. That’s even more pitiable. His fins twitch as if he could sense the tiny not-sparks through the screen. The two are leaning closer. They’re going to _hug_. He _knows_ it. This is finally going to go from pale tease to outright porn. The video dims and the scene ends. It takes him a moment to recover, the darkened screen having dumped him back into his body, somehow changed by the experience, disappointment and even melancholy accompanying the abruptness of it. 

He recovers himself in a few moments and moves on, flipping over to the discussion boards to see who’s arguing about what. He’s confused about a lot, but finding an obvious idiot to shred should make him feel better. He checks the boards and makes note of who among his gossip-frenemies hasn’t commented yet. He sends Nep a link and prepays for the video. She might be a landdweller, but Nep’s a hunter – pragmatic _and_ romantic, not everyone can have the good taste to be born gilled. Kar never comments on pale porn, he’s more interested in flush and complicated romantic comedies with lots of flipping, but he sends him the link and prepays for it too.

Oh, great, “turntechGodhead” is online. He’s some internet-famous cullbait rust who thinks it’s funny to type in bright red and slip subversive anti-empire messages into everything he touches. This idiot thinks that just because he was the guy who led the memetrash masses into Shouty fandom that somehow means he knows everything there is to know about Shouty. Eridan blames TG for the aforementioned rush of plebs. If it weren’t for this douche… The hell is this douche even rambling about now?

TG: oh god oh man i think ul is my neighbor and that means shouty is in the building he was there all along what do i do help me oh magic interwebs

Accompanying this post is a shitty drawing of a generic hivestem with UL’s pixelated face plastered all over it and the misspelled words written in heretical red: "theyer paping it up in the flor abov". 

TG’s fawning posse (these fucking plebs, are they even fans of Shouty of just fans of a fan?) are quick to clog the boards with messages of support.

“I think he’s my neighbor too, definitely seen that guy getting slurpies at the corner store… OMG THAT MEANS *YOU’RE* MY NEIGHBOR!”

“Go talk to him!! Be all like iyaan sempai I like your amateur porn!”

“You can do it!”

“Ironic selfies or it didn’t happen.”

“Hey, how about I come over to your place and we’ll stake them out?”

All right, that’s gone far enough. It’s Eridan’s duty as their seaborn superior to inject some sense into this mess.

CA: theyre professional entertainers they dont havve time for you sad sacks a wwaste

His sense is not appreciated. The forum idiots don’t even respond with logical, well-thought counter arguments. They… they _meme_ at him. TG himself doesn’t even bother to respond.

CA: havve some fuckin respect for shoutys privacy an dont just go advertisin wwhere he lives or wworks like some sorta stalker mob like wwoww youre all wworse than a bunch a three swweep old clowwns hopped up on their first taste a faygo

Take _that_ , internet!

TG: dudes right i hope yall dont take my comments to mean youre free to come busting down our hivestem

TG: im chiller than any trolls got a right to be but even the chilliest of bros wouldnt hesitate to cut a bitch if that bitch came knocking at his hive without warning

CA: sea evven your pervverted quadrant blurring freak leader agrees wwith me thanks for havvin twwo fuckin brain cells to rub together

TG: youre wwwwelcome mister hypocrite

Finally, riding high on his credit chit and having just trumped yet another idiot on the forum board, he sends a prepaid link to Feferi. Half a second later he regrets it and is typing out a “please do not open, all a mistake…” when his incoming message chimes and Nep distracts him. She’s at her own moirail’s hive and he gets into a hissy three-way semi-argument with her stuffy moirail over sending his “innocent moirail indecent and 100d media”. Yeah. Right. Like Nep isn’t a co-president of the Care-Across-Castes-And-Quads society. Eridan tells him it’s not his business to monitor her intellectual or entertainment modules. When in doubt, take the moral high ground. Stuffy argues that it’s his right to protect her. She argues that she can access material and defend her right to it just fine and that the both of them are stuffy. Fine. Be that way. Eridan slams his husktop closed without following up with Feferi. He needs to go hunting anyhow. It’s just as well that he never hit pale release. The edge will make him sharper. Maybe delivering a half dozen wild hoofbeasts to Feferi will tempt her back into the probationary pile. And it’s nobody’s business if he imagines telling Equius what his infuriating presence has _driven_ him to do. 


	4. Nights in the past, but not many...

A knock on the door interrupts the current grave order of business, option A: ordering takeout from that one place down the road that has a firm policy not to poison or experiment on regular customers or option B: one of the three residents of the hive venturing to create something that is both comestible and agreed upon.

You’ve been arguing for takeout because A: you currently have caegars and if you can’t use them to stuff your face, what good are they?, B: you don’t want to lose your status as regulars, the wiggler three floors down is still re-growing his hair after skipping out on the biweekly splurge and it's new customers by first-person introduction only, and C: you cooked the last three times. Well, you put stuff on food serving plateaus anyhow. And you defrosted it first.

Terezi is playing up her likelihood of mistaking the salt for the sugar (false). Sollux is pretending not to hear any suggestion that two working grasping appendages and one case of overgrown smug psionics should practically volunteer him for food preparation duties.

 _You_ are working up to a full-blown Hello FlailKat episode because yesternight you cleaned the entire disgusting hygiene block by yourself and you don’t know where the herd of shitbeasts _came_ _from_ or _disappeared to_ but if you find someone in the act of getting tooth polish on the mirror again you don’t know what you’re going to do but it will probably be embarrassing for all involved. Probably shove some prepositions up their rear and make them dust DragonMom with the last clean antistatic cloth.

The knock is a welcome distraction, even if, like everything else on Alternia, it may well be your doom. You’ve been trying to manage your anger recently. You still feel really weird about this whole selling your intimate embarrassing moments for cold hard roecubes.

-

Terezi opens the door to the hall and you set your stance for defense and even Sollux pulls his head out of the pile of hive components he’s mauling and watches, which is as prepared as Sollux gets for things that don’t happen online.

“Do you have two cups of flour I could borrow?” asks the ginormous gap-toothed grape-blooded highblood in the hive doorway. 

And then, without waiting for an answer, he just sort of keeps going, providing yet another nail for the woody plant sarcophagus in which the theory that colder blood = higher functioning has long since taken up residence. His face is stupid. So is his paint, his fluffy hair and that stupid antique accent from somewhere in the boonies. His clothes are also stupid. Someone should tell him that.

“Ha, ha, Dave never has any real food and it’s too late to order out.” You hate him on principle. You also hate the little gap in his teeth. You slide back behind the foodprep area partition and watch as Terezi commences interrogation.

“What kind?” asks Terezi, as if, even though she’d scarcely deign to assist in something so mundane as food prep, she knows every inch of her newly claimed territory and holds claim to all it contains.

“Um, whatever you can spare? Like cricket flour would be awesome, Dave’s kind of scrawny and needs all the protein he can get, but any kind will do?

-

They talk. And talk. Days pass. Nights pass. You die of boredom. Sollux’s dehydrated corpse is colonized by bees.

It has been a whole five minutes.

You’ll never get fed this way. And you left your husktop in the other room. You are experiencing interweb withdrawal. You stomp into the food prep block, (you’re already there, you only manage two stomps) and you grab the half-empty bag of cricket flour from the last time the three of you thought that flapcakes were a good idea and had found that they lacked a certain something and also had a bit too much in the way of avian calcium deposits. You stomp your way across the entry block and you shove the mostly closed bag at the festering pustule on your doorstop.

You have to shove upwards so that it hits him in the stomach and not the bonebulge. The bag poofs a bit of flour out on his stupid shirt. He looks down at the bag and at you. A hand automatically comes up and grabs the bag. You let go and put your hands on your hips in classic beset-by-idiots style. His hands are so big he could crush your head with one ginormous pinch.

“Cool beans, shorty! And wow, this is the good stuff! And it’s half full. Thanks so much!”

That stupid face grins at you and you exhale, slowly, and inhale, and then you waste all two caegars of that online course on anger management.

“Why don’t you go get lost now, we’ve got important things to do here and _you_ are _not_ invited.” You grimace at him to indicate just how unfairly put-upon you are to even have to tell him as much when he ought to know and you make a good effort at shutting the door with him still in it. He doesn’t seem to notice, so you give him a kick in the shin and he hops backwards as you try to push the door shut.

You figure that you’re either dead in about half a minute and won’t have to deal with dinner arrangements, or you’ve solved the most recent hiveblock problem and can therefore escape prep-duties.

He looks up at you (well, down, but up from the bag, which he's been re-rolling in a futile effort to re-seal it) and his eyes go wide.

 “Oh my glub, stay there! Dave is like your _biggest_ fan. He has posters. And a _bag_. Wow. He's gonna, like, _shizzlesplode_!”

The idiot bolts off, feet pounding on the stairs.

“Dave, Dave, _Dave_ , guess what?!”

Terezi is laughing. You shut the door and lock it. You lock both the deadbolts and figure it would take gap-toothed grape oh, about two seconds to break down, but that he might die laughing in the meanwhile, so it’s worthwhile.

“Terezi, you snaggle-toothed shameless-idiot-enabler, we are ordering in. You are paying. Hurry up or I’ll bleach all your clothes the next time I lug everything to the laundering bug facility.”

You wander off in a daze toward Sollux’s box of salvaged overclocked husktops. He gets them cheap from other hive residents when his bees report back on which ones are the next to go. You suspect his bees are sometimes the _cause_ of all those prematurely-aged-but-salvageable wreckages. Most of the neighbors are jerks so you don’t care. You collapse on the box and half cock your ears to listen for the lispy bitching of a nerd in fear for his stash. Silence. And buzzing. You roll over and attempt to bury your head in chitin fragments. You snort out a chunk of fusing snot.

You’re going to die. Not smashed to death by someone’s ragegasm, oh no. You’re going to spontaneously birth an aneurysm and keel over in your grubloaf. You have a feeling for this sort of thing. Well, Sollux does. Clearly you’ll just have to think of something suitably biting and also somehow indicative of your mildly tolerant feelings for him. If he’s going to be hearing your last words, you don’t want them to be any more embarrassing than necessary.


	5. miilk2hake briing2 all the bee2 two the nerd

It's the weirdest sensation Karkat has experienced in his life when he is sent a link to his own almost-porn.

"Lowbloods," Terezi is saying. She's been researching market trends. "Lowbloods are what sells, preferably males. They're stereotyped as being the least aggressive hemocaste/gender combination, and thus the most pitiable."

Karkat's finger hovers over the link. Is he seriously considering clicking on that? Why the fuck would he consider clicking on that? He  _made_  that vid, he knows exactly what happens.

Sollux is being a slob and a bad host, as always. He slouches over the table, wearing nothing but bee-themed boxers, grunting occasionally at Terezi's reports while blowing bubbles into his honeyed (NOT mind honey) lususmilk through a bendy straw. "You mean we hit the jackpot by accident," he says. "I don't care."

"My  _point_ \--" and Terezi is really very pointy so it's just weird when she says that, "is that we have another lowblood male frenemy, do we not? We need to start thinking of market shares and brand expansion. Soon, we'll be associated with quality pale entertainment with a sense of humor! We need variety!" She slams her cane down in emphasis. "Also, I need an assistant who's not you two idiots."

Karkat, meanwhile, has managed to leave the link alone. He's even managed to reply to Eridan in what he hopes is a nonchalant tone, IT'S JUST A PALE TEASE VID. WHAT ABOUT IT? He hits send and wipes his sweaty palms against his pants. Shutting his husktop to avoid further temptation to trawl the forums and own the dumbasses who are totally wrong about his relationship with Sollux, Karkat quirks an eyebrow Terezi's way.

"If you mean Pupa, his horns are clearly concupiscent fetish material, which he would never agree to do, and which I would never be enough of an asshole to bully him into doing."

"Oh, please. This is a classy diamonds-only establishment. Just have him cuddle with his lusus for a minute and I guarantee we'll see more than a thousand credits roll in."

Sollux continues to blow bubbles. His bees have brought out mini bendy straws and joined in.

Terezi returns Karkat's quirked brow with a waggle of her own unfairly expressive eyebrows in silent goading. She gives him the chin-hands treatment, just waiting for him to give in. Karkat pretends that he's not seriously considering her proposition. He pretends he's not eventually going to give in because Terezi Gets What She Wants, and if he refuses to accommodate her kind request she'll do it herself. Fuck no he doesn't want Tavros traumatized! The bastard's enough of a mess as is.

Still, it's no good letting Terezi think she's in charge (even if she sort of is). Karkat focuses on Sollux for the moment. He goes to make more porn. 

Karkat idly fiddles with Sollux’s “manual” camera, flick, flick, flick. It would be more accurate to call it a psionically-operated photosensitive image producer, but for the rest of the non-psionically inclined, even those outside the hoity-toity cold range, it’s a manual camera. He tabs through the shots and plays with the buttons. Click. Sollux doesn’t notice. The bees pay no mind. Click. Click. He looks through the viewfinder this time, pretends he’s the directormentor, frames the shot, all bees around the massive (by comparison) glass, Sollux’s split-nailed and chewed fingertips curiously delicate on the bendy straw. He switches out to the video camera, still without Sollux’s apparent notice. Or care at least. He frames the shot and starts the camera, waits. Burble. Burble. It’s so weird that Sollux drinks milk, even with choking amounts of sweetener. A bee falls into the glass and Sollux pulls it out with his wiggly straw, oh wait, it’s actually a stylized set of bulges. SOLLUX HAVE YOU NO SHAME?!, Directormentor Shouty very calmly thinks. Okay, loudly, but he’s still just thinking it, he doesn’t actually shout. The crowd of bees are grooming their milk-sodden compatriot, it’s a giant orgy in the space of half a meal plateau. Bees have no shame. It is clearly a metaphor.

Sollux taps out a few drops of lususmilk for some of the bees crowding close again. He gets a few drops on his fingers and the bees swarm, tiny tongues flicking, just a programmerist and his loyal, codependent hive of computing augments. Nerd porn gold. Gold nerd porn.

The glass is emptied and licked clean. Sollux yawns, huge and unselfconscious. His fangs almost look respectable and Karkat pans up the skinny ladder of his thoracic struts and zooms in. It’s just idle fancy. If he had the macro lens it really would look like a cavern, complete with stalagmites and stalactites… and lost wigglers wondering which are which. A passing bee lands on the Useless Lump’s nose and clings, leans in as if to survey the fearsome cavernous expanse. Sollux sneezes and Karkat shuts the camera off to wipe the lens. Gross. Just like everything else about Sollux. Not cute at all. Terezi cackles like a terrorlizard brooding a nest full of baby terrorbeasts, one that’s just sighted something small, tasty, and made of meat. She snatches the camera, flicks it on, runs the footage and gives it a full lick. Also gross. It’s not like she doesn’t know exactly what happened sniffing and hearing it. Karkat is sure she’s doing it on purpose.


	6. pROPOSITIONED

**Hours in the future, but not many...**

Tavros Nitram finishes watching the pale vid Nepeta sends him, and... He can't shake the feeling that he, uh, kind of, maybe knows that guy? Um, isn't that Sollux? Nepeta probably doesn't know since her moirail has "furbidden" her from FLARPing, but Aradia based a campaign around Sollux's hivestem once. Team Charge had to defend the  ~~hivestem~~  Princess' Tower from the raiding team...

Either way, he is reasonably sure that is Sollux, unless by some paroxysm of fate there happens to be two double-horned psionics who look just like Sollux.

Nepeta is waiting for a reply. "Well??? Aren't they purrecious?" her last message says. Should he tell her? His reply box blink-blink-blinks accusingly. This is a conundrum. Oh, god, this is, this is bad. Trollian pings more in quick succession.

CG: SO TEREZI'S TELLING ME TO BREAK THIS TO YOU GENTLY, BUT THERE REALLY IS NO WAY TO BREAK THIS GRUBLOAF GENTLY. NITRAM. DO YOU WANT TO BE A PORN STAR?

Oh god, this. Oh no. Oh. God no, he shouts, all the time. Tavros has just, definitely, figured out who Shouty is. Oh no no no. And to think he almost papped himself to thoughts of Karkat. That is really no good, no good at all.

CA: nep says she sent the vvid to you an i trust her wwhen she says you have good taste

CA: wwhaddaya say wwe form a palemance connoisseur club just the three of us

CA: pun intended

nOOOOOOOOOOOOO

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sollux's dress with the poofy (lumpy) sleeves is an homage to Lumpy Space Princess.


	7. 4 DUTY TO TH1S BOOTY

**Back in the present… or perhaps a few minutes to it:**

The terrorlizard that is his business manager exclaims, “Karkat, it is your duty and privilege to contact Tavros! As a fellow member of the industry. Be gentle, my Shouty Nublet, we want to catch the whole evolution of his virginal papability on film. Try not to mess with the goods.”

“WHAT? NO! IF YOU WANT TO MAKE THIS MESS OF A GIANT COMMERCIALIZED ORGY BIGGER, PROCURE YOUR OWN PIECES OF PALE MEAT, YOU SORDID SLIPPERY SHIT WIZARD!”

-

**Bee Terezi: Bee Terezi is not available, she is currently raiding a neighboring hive. (Mind your beeswax, gentletrolls, and anything else that isn't nailed down.)**

**Be Terezi: That’s easy enough, you’re already on the premises.**

Karkat honestly smells alarmed. Sollux is conked out on the floor in a pile of broken computer parts and the ceramic shards formerly known as your favorite grubcorn bowl. Yes, you brought your own. It’s hard to get a good red with just the right amount of radiation for sizzle. Karkat’s already dumped a blanket on him and straightened it, twice, as he paces back and forth psyching himself up to contact poor sweet innocent Tavros before you scare the FBS out of him. He hasn’t noticed his adjustments to Entertaining Lump. Karkat doesn’t notice a lot of things. You look forward to cultivating Tavros into someday papping Shouty. Of course, you, like so many denizens of the faceless interwebs, look forward to seeing a lot of people pap Karkat. Orgy indeed. You don’t cackle. And if you salivate, it’s only mentally.

Karkat stamps around some more and you’re glad that you didn’t oversell it. Not that there was a big risk, but you pride yourself on finesse. He’ll probably figure it out later once he stops to think about it, but he’s already wringing his hands through his hair and stomping out something on his husktop. You idly wonder how many keyboards he’s worn through.

You can hear the chime that means he’s made contact and Tavros is being subjected to put-upon-for-your-own-good-Vantas. Karkat should have been a jade. You wait for the clicking and hand-waving to calm down, mentally count grubs as mental Shoutycrab tenderly tucks them into tiny recupercoons and then flails as they crawl out and whine for a drink of grubjuice. Actual grubs at a pale shoot would be sick. Someone would pay, but you’re not interested in that kind of fetishism, even if, technically, if you can do it to them, it’s legal. There’s plenty of ways of palping pity glands and nostalgia for lost lusii without actually resorting to _grubnapping_. This here is a classy establishment. Of the law. And pre-order. You’ll have to have Sollux add a pre-order option to the website, you anticipate production to be ramping up. Karkat’s crabtop slams shut and scuttles off and he sulks over to Sollux and pokes him a few times, wanders off and settles on the couch in a fine self-hating sulk. You wait a few more rounds of grub tucking for him to settle down. He sighs like a floatation device deflating.

There, Karkat ought to have tenderized Tavros just sufficiently to make a job as your assistant more palatable. Mmm. Tavros is very palatable. So pale. You leave the tenderizing to sink in a bit and message Aradia, whose current FLARPing arc should be winding down… about now.

GC: HOW DO YOU F33L ABOUT B31NG 4 P4L3 R3CRU1T3R?

AA: Depends, do I get to feel up the goods?

GC: 4LL TH3 GOODS.

AA: I feel pretty good about it. All the pretty goods about it. OuO

AA: That would be pretty skeevy if I wasn’t already papping Sollux.

GC: MR C4PTOR H4S 4LR34DY CONF3SSED FULLY. THOUGH MR V4NT4S H4S B33N R3LUCT4NT TO D1VULG3 TH3 CONT3NTS OF YOUR V1S1TS. SUSP1C1OUS.

AA: I’ve kissed Karkat a few times too, so there’s that.

GC: 1 COULD B3 CONV1NC3D TO 4M3ND YOUR T1TL3 TO H4R3M M1STR3SS SO LONG 4S YOU ST1LL P41D PROP3R R3SPECT TO MY 4UTHOR1TY 4S BUS1N3SS M4N4GING JUD1C1OUS T3RRORL1Z4RD.  JUST1C3 D3M4NDS: WH3R3 D1D YOU K1SS H1M?

AA: An officer of the law! And business! Dear Redglare, I have only the greatest of respect for my snazzy fellow cahootigan! And it was on the brow.

GC: >B] >  B] >B]

AA: You’re imagining it, aren’t you? His hair is softer than it looks. His eyelashes… fluttered.

GC: W3 4R3 PURV3Y3RS 1N ONLY TH3 F1N3ST OF FLUFFY PORN. 1T WOULD B3 CR1M1N4L NOT TO MON1TOR FOR QU4L1TY. TH3R3’S 4LSO 4 POS1T1ON 1N 4DCOPY 1F YOU W4NT T1M3 OFF FOR B3H4V1OR.

AA: I wouldn’t want to be on the wrong side of the law, Redglare! But you might need to monitorlizard my behavior closely nonetheless. OuO Ou* OuO

GC: SO CLOS3LY. W1TH 4 M4CRO L3NS.

AA: Oooh! Just like that Redglare! And I want an additional 20 percent for any scene participation with a group of three to four. 30 if there are just two of us. Individual negotiation for scenes of five and above, with rights of refusal, of course.

GC: 10 4ND 15. TH3 H1V3 MUST H4V3 1TS DU3.

AA: 15 and 20. A teal with a porn business is just a savvy entrepreneur. A warmblood is a trashy opportunist. A gold digger if you will.

AA: We’ll discuss my cut as a business partner once we develop a business model and determine duties.

GC: DON3. 4ND YOUR GOLD 1S CURR3NTLY SL33P1NG. 1N A P1L3 1F NOT 4 COON. 1 M1GHT NOT P4P TH4T BUT 1’M NOT GOING TO RU1N 4N 1NV3STM3NT. OR 4 FR3N3MY.

AA: Oh my, such control. I thought all dragons liked to sleep on gold. Have my wigglerhood tales led me so far astray? Oh callous day!

GC: TH3R3’S ONLY ROOM FOR SO M4NY 3LBOWS 1N ONE PIL3. L3 S1GH. TH3 M1GHTY DR4GON PL4C3S H3R BONY 4RM SPURS ONTO TH3 T4BL3 4ND CONT3MPL4T3S TH4T TH3 D3L1C1OUS LOUD R3D LUMP 1S MUCH MORE CUSH1ONY. 4L4S. SH3 DO3S NOT W1SH TO BR34K H1M. W1TH GR34T 4W3SOM3 COM3S GR34T R3SPONS1B1L1TY. 1 H4V3 4 DUTY TO THIS BOOTY. 4ND TH4T BOOTY. 4ND TH4T BOOTY. 4LL TH1S BOOTY. BOOM SH4K4L4K4.

AA: That is a lot of booty! I sure am glad it’s in safe grasping fronds.

AA: Fantasy set safely aside for future contemplation, what’s the first order of business, partner?

GC: 1 W1LL B3 CONV1NCING T4VROS TO JO1N US 4T TH3 US3L3SS LUMP 4ND SHOUTY H1V3 P4RTY. H3 W1LL B3 BR1NG1NG H1S LUSUS. H3 W1LL N33D 4N ONSCR33N N4M3 4ND W3 C4N ST1LL US3 4T L34ST TWO MOR3 W4RMBLOOD M4L3S 4CCORD1NG TO MY GROWTH MOD3L. KNOW 4NY D3L1C1OUS RUSTS OR GR33NS W1TH CUDDLY LUS11? ON3S WHO WON’T TRY TO OFF OUR PR1Z3 MOOB34STS?

AA: Rusts, Terezi? Don’t you see that as offensive?

GC: 1 SN1FF 4T WH4T YOU D1D TH3R3 4ND TH3 COURT DO3S NOT B3L13V3 TH4T YOU 4RE OFF3ND3D.

AA: Oh pooh, have a bit of mercy on the aging rustblood’s fun. Treasure hunts are my specialty, especially when no one else has caught on to the prize yet. That’s the best part, snatching something no one else thinks is valuable.  You wouldn’t believe the stuff I’ve found in ancient dumps. Let me check with AC. How do you feel about piteous broken constructs that just want to comfort hapless trolls? I think there’s about to be some more broken robots on the market.

GC: 1T’S 4 N1CH3 M4RK3T BUT 1T’S N3V3R TOO 34RLY TO STOCK UP FOR FUTUR3 D1V3RS1F1C4TION.

AA: When Sollux wakes up, have him hack Equius’s surveillance bots and set them to record and transmit to his lockbox system. Not sure of the timeline yet, but I’m hoping for volcanic eruption.

GC: 1’LL K33P MY NOS3 TO TH3 41R FOR SOM3 P1TCH P3R33CT G3YS3R 3RUPT1ONS. 1 SH4LL TRUST TH3 H4R3M M1STR3SS’S JUDG3M3NT R3G4RDING FUTUR3 QU4DR4NT D1VERS1F1C4T1ON. KNOCK ‘3M D34D, 4R4D14.

GC: 4ND 1F YOU’R3 GO1NG BY K4RK4T’S H1V3 WOULD YOU D3L1V3R H1S RO3CUB3S TO CR4BD4D? 1F TH3Y T4K3 UP 4NY MOR3 SP4C3 1N H3R3 1’M GO1NG TO B3 S3NS1NG F1SH 3V3RYWH3R3.

GC: F1SH, F1SH, 3V3RYWH3R3. 4ND NOT 4 SOL3 1N TH3 CL1NK.

AA: Of course! The fierce and mighty dragon should only breathe fire, not fish. Though if you catch ‘em fresh, fish are delicious when grilled. You want friendly legislacerator or stern legislacerator if it comes up?

Aradia signs off without waiting for an answer and you let yourself laugh. Karkat mumbles in his sleep, head on the floor, feet over the back of the couch. You limber up your fingers and sniffer to contact Tavros. You may, possibly, contemplate if you know of any fish in need of grilling. 


	8. Bad Parenting

**Meanwhile:**

Eridan returns to the ocean with five huge dead hoofbeast carcasses… and one live baby hoofbeast. It’s super scrawny. No way it’ll survive the night. No way Mommy Carbuncle wouldn’t choke on it. He delivers the carcasses to the rendezvous point and returns to his hive with a baby hoofbeast attempting to suck on his armpit. Ugh. Mammals. There’s got to be something in the hive he can feed it. He’s just going to get it plump enough to be useful, then it’s curtains for Mr. Pleats. He makes himself a snack and boots up his husktop, surfs around for a bit with a baby hoofbeast attempting to settle itself in his lap. He ignores the pile of hoofbeast crap on his carpet. He’s going to have to drag the whole thing outside and beat it. It somehow doesn’t cross his mind to dump the hoofbeast outside. Or beat it.

He messages Nep to ask what to feed a hoofbeast and how to keep it out of his lap. No luck, but it seems she’s up for discussing the latest video and who she shared it with… he opens a message box to adiosToreador. Important questions first, then he can ask if the guy knows anything about baby hoofbeasts. Eridan gets as far as "hey tavv wwhat did you think of" before a sudden round of giggling reaches him through the open respiteblock window and he slams his husktop shut from ingrained reflexes.

"Hi, Mr. Ampora!" his wiggler stalkers chorus. They then proceed to chatter all at once.

"Is that a hoofbeast? That's so cool!"

"Hey, do you have time to give me another harpoon lesson this perigee?"

"Who were you messaging? Is Tav your matesprit?"

"SHUT UP, YOU CODDAMN LEECHES! SHOO! GO AWWAY!"

"Can I play with your hoofbeast?"

"A pitch crush maybe? We can help you set up a date!"

"Should I change my strife specibus for a stealth campaign?"

"AAAARRRGH! WWHAT'S A GUY GOTTA DO TO GET SOME PRIVVACY IN HIS OWN HIVVE?!" Eridan shoves the wigglers out before they can crawl in through the window. He shuts and bars it and pulls the curtains down, then stomps through his hive checking all the other possible entrances, making sure to tell Dad to be on the lookout for another infestation.

Finally, peace and quiet! Eridan settles back into his chair, ready to resume messaging when he feels... wetness. Mr. Pleats is sucking on his earfins. Wwwwwwhhhhyyy?

 

**Sweeps in the past, but not many:**

Eridan is a pro FLARPer; this is exactly what it sounds like. He makes his _living_ from FLARPing. Most trolls FLARP to pretend to be someone else - to pretend to be a legendary figure, and Eridan used to be that way too. Nowadays it seems like he's a legend in his own right. It doesn't feel like he's pretending when he says he's Orphaner Dualscar since he is this generation's orphaner.

When he'd first started, older trolls used to not believe him when he said he wanted the corpses of their lusii to feed to the Rift Carbuncle. Then they became SpiderMom food and their clade spread the word. Eridan grew leaner and taller and more vicious. His kill count went up. Word spread farther and farther through the FLARPing crowd. "Don't engage the Orphaner or your lusus will be Horrorterror chow. Don't seek revenge, or _you'll_ be spider chow!"

It's getting harder to find players with the right combination of cruel stupidity (to wager their own custodian's life), and sizable lusus. Vriska's increasing ruthlessness makes it harder still. It seems like FLARP is losing popularity, or perhaps it's just that most trolls willing to play against Eridan are already dead. This is a matter of grave concern. It strains his relationship with Feferi too; fills him up with thoughts of "wwhy am i the one doing evverything in this relationship?" when she hints that he should send more food.

Eridan spills his woes to Karkat, who tells Terezi, who tells Aradia, who tells Tavros. His frenemies are all such meddlers.

"Gee, why don't you try just playing for fun?" Aradia asks. "That's what Team Charge does, and we always have other teams willing to compete with us."

"We, uh, also form alliances outside of clade," Tavros adds, "and help our allies defeat their enemies. So, maybe if you, um, had more friends who needed help? They could repay you later, by finding big lusii for you..."

That's all well and good for Team Charge, who're friendly and _warm_. Eridan needs a different approach, though he admits they've given him ideas.

The solution he comes up with? Tutorial campaigns.

Wigglers tend to quit or die right away if the learning curve is too steep, but most FLARPers don't want to help level up enemy players. The very notion is counterintuitive to survival! But Eridan is not most FLARPers. He's a _pro_. Chances of a newbie killing him are next to none. Hell, the chances of _any_ player killing him at this point are pretty low. None of the other seadwellers want to take on orphaner duties, so they keep away from him, and they tell their clades to keep away from him too. He's long been tainted by association with the Scourge Sisters, and that keeps away a whole lot more. Anyone not frightened away by his reputation or associates? Pretty much guaranteed to be incompetent if they haven't yet realized that he's a fucking _prince of the high seas_ wielding _the world's most powerful laser rifle_ atop a _flying lusus mount_. Death from land, sea, and air. There is nowhere to hide. If Eridan wants someone dead, that someone is fucking dead.

He starts advertising on the most popular FLARP meet-up forums: "experimental campaign - loww chance of death, high levvel items!" Lured by the promise of almost-free treasures, the littlest grubs crawl out to meet him. To avoid frightening them too much, he tells them he will have a minimal presence in the campaign - really, he's just here to test out a clever piece of programming, he says in the most "you're not wworth my time" tone he can muster. He sends them to the best spots to gain experience with a re-purposed Critical Whale as their team's wise but snarky mentor. 

The first wiggler team completes their adventure with Critical Whale at their side, giving them gaming tips as well as fashion advice. They grow attached to the whale and get sad when they reach the end. They meet up with Eridan again, who forces them to make The Choice: a piece of Orphaner Dualscar's treasure, or the whale...

Eridan points a harpoon at the whale. "Choose. Noww."

"Treasure... No! We have to save the whale!"

"You idiot, the whale is a flapstraction! As soon as the session ends, he'll be gone."

"SHAINA IS RIGHT, PELLEK. I AM BUT A GAMING CONSTRUCT. YOU WOULD DO WELL TO CHOOSE THE TREASURE, AND ALSO GET RID OF THOSE LEG WARMERS. THEY LOOK STUPID."

They pick the treasure because the whale would never lead them astray. Eridan tosses some enchanted jewelry their way. He then takes great glee in murdering the whale while the trolls who had grown attached to it cling to each other and cry.

Victory, but at what cost. WHAT COST.

Eridan returns to hive that night proud that he'd created a campaign worth talking about. He gets to generate more buzz for FLARP among the new generation as well as take out his violent tendencies on the whale - what's not to love?

Unfortunately, he fails to predict how much the wigglers love the whale. Shaina and Pellek urge future players of this particular campaign to save the whale. Eridan is surprised when another team of wigglers actually does so... and falls into his backup trap.

After they make their choice, a dramatic pause ensues before Eridan and the whale simultaneously speak: "BUT I AM THE WWHALE! MWWAHAHAHAHA!"

The players are sucked into a boss battle versus their beloved mentor, Critical Wwhale, and forced to slay the wwhale with their very own hands. The flapstraction explodes and rains treasure over the players while Eridan rides off into the moonset on SeahorseDad, cackling all the way.

Sweeps later, Eridan has gained a troop of FLARPing wigglers who like to hang out at his hive and bug him at the most inopportune times. Masochists, all of them. Have they learned nothing from the grief inflicted upon them by Eridan's own hands?

They look at him, wide eyes gleaming. "We owe everything to the whale, and you _are_ the whale!"


	9. pROPOSITIONED: part 2

**Tavros: bee down to earth**

...Sorry, let's try that again.

**Tavros: be down to earth**

AT: uH,,, iS THIS, a JOKE?

In another universe, you and your hatefriends create a world called “Earth”, of which the inhabitants semi-worship their unknown creators in the form of mumbo jumbo magical birth signs. Those born under your sign are said to be “down to Earth”, which is a peculiar way of putting it seeing as everyone on Earth is presumably down… on… it…?

Nevertheless, alternate-god-you is a kind patron. He graces his humans with traits such as being sensible and sensual (???) and strong-willed. Apparently those are supposed to be traits descended from you even though it kind of sounds made-up to be honest. Or it would, if you were aware of this fact. But you’re not. Because you’re not alternate-god-you. You’re just Tavros, who is being porn-propositioned, which is not a thing that ever crossed your mind as a possibility, never mind one you ever thought would come to pass.

Really, you’re not an attractive troll! Or… you don’t think you are…? People who hit on you just want to make fun of you. }:(

…Or are stoned out of their minds.

Stubbornness, though, you can do that. There’s this thing about Karkat and why, even though he’s a good guy to go to for romantic advice in real life, you never want to talk to him about shipping. It’s because he’s stubborn, and you’re stubborn, and neither of you can be like Nepeta who just ships Everyone/Everyone in Every Quadrant.

You say platonic, he says romantic. You say pale, he says flush. The two of you have NEVER agreed on any ships, like, EVER. In the short half sweep that you sort of tried to talk about ships with him, anyway… Funny thing is, even though Karkat is more lukewarm enemy than friend these days, you never thought he was the type to play mean-spirited jokes like this.

And okay, yeah, the way you grew apart is maybe more than half your fault because you have a habit of thinking everything is pale until someone suggests sloppy makeouts, and Karkat tried to tell you to stop assuming everything was pale, but you kinda never listened to him even though he was totally right, and as a result the excrement hit the whirling device, and then you kinda… never apologized for not taking his advice which would have saved a lot of people a lot of hurt feelings. You really hope nobody is suggesting sloppy makeouts. You have a terribad track record with dealing with people when they suggest sloppy makeouts.

For example, Gamzee. Course of action: flailed around ‘uh, uh, um, uh’ until he forgot.

For example, Vriska. Course of action: flailed around ‘uh, uh, um, uh’ until she threw you off a cliff.

And to think all of that “I’ll make you stronger” stuff seemed like  _pale support_  to you at the time! Wow. That’s  _stupid_.

Luckily you weren’t hurt too badly, so you were able to talk Aradia out of doing something rash like exacting bitter revenge that would lead to a vicious cycle of doom for everyone. She has a temper like that. Warmblood though she may be, she’s still female. But you, you’re grounded. Practical, one could say. It’s your job to be the calm half of Team Charge. Aradia, with her treasure-hunting business, is the primary grubloaf winner. As her partner, you manage the team’s inventory and expenses.

You think about the state of your personal finances, though. A brownblood’s allowance isn’t much at all. It’s only because Tinkerbull’s so small that you’ve lived so well so far. If, and this is a really big if, it was possible to make easy money doing… those types of things… You would, you would do it, uh, wouldn’t you? That would just be, the most sensible course of action. Karkat isn’t the type to toy with other trolls’ feelings, even if the other troll is more enemy than friend.

Your screen has filled up with gray text while you were wringing your hands.

CG: OF COURSE IT’S A JOKE. IT’S ALL A HUGE, CRUEL COSMIC JOKE. THE SIZE OF THIS JOKE IS SO IMMENSE IT CAN ONLY BE MEASURED IN FUCK-YOUS, A UNIT OF MEASUREMENT I INVENTED TO DESCRIBE THE MORASS OF COMPLETE IDIOCY THAT IS MY LIFE. ONE FUCK-YOU IS EQUIVALENT TO STUBBING YOUR TOE ON SHIT YOUR LUSUS LEFT OUT. THIS JOKE MEASURES A WHOPPING SIX HUNDRED THOUSAND FUCK-YOUS.

CG: BUT IS IT A JOKE I’M PLAYING ON YOU? I WISH. I SINCERELY WISH IT WERE SO.

CG: BY WHICH I MEAN I’M

CG: I MEAN, FROM ONE JOKE RECIPIENT TO ANOTHER,

CG: GOD, THIS IS STUPID. FORGET I EVER SAID ANYTHING.

AT: cAN i TAKE THIS TO MEAN, THAT YOU ARE ASKING ME TO BE, uH, A PORN STAR, bECAUSE YOU ARE ONE, tOO,,,

CG: DON’T BE THAT GUY, NITRAM.

AT: ???

CG: DON’T BE THAT GUY WHO ASKS QUESTIONS HE ALREADY KNOWS THE ANSWERS TO.

AT: sORRY,,,

AT: uMM, iS IT JUST, pALE STUFF THEN,,, bECAUSE i DON’T THINK i COULD DO, aNYTHING ELSE,

CG: YEAH, JUST PALE. I WOULDN’T DO BUCKETS, EITHER. TEREZI MIGHT TRY TO “DIVERSIFY” LATER BECAUSE SHE’S A GIANT PERVERT, BUT I’LL FIGHT HER ON THAT IF SHE TRIES TO MAKE YOU DO ANYTHING YOU DON’T WANT TO.

CG: SHE’S OUR “MANAGER” BY THE WAY. FAIR WARNING: SHE’LL BE CONTACTING YOU SHORTLY. I BET SHE’LL TRY TO GUILT-TRIP YOU WITH ‘BUT AREN’T WE FLARP BUDDIES’ HOOFBEASTSHIT.

AT: oH, oKAY,

AT: i'LL THINK ABOUT IT, i GUESS, aND GET BACK TO YOU ON THAT,

CG: I WOULD TELL YOU TO STAY AWAY FOR YOUR OWN GOOD, BUT MISERY LOVES COMPANY. WE’RE AT SOLLUX’S HIVE IF YOU DECIDE TO COME OVER. YOU KNOW WHERE IT IS.

CG: AND BRING YOUR LUSUS.

Tinkerbull moos. It’s a very fatherly moo. Even someone who couldn’t commune would know it meant, “Son, I’ll always love you no matter what choices you make.”

You give him a cuddle.


	10. Commandeering ≠ Endeering

**Eridan: Feel put upon**

Nobody is replying to you. Well, Nep is, and Kar sort of. He replied once, but it was a shut down. Don’t know why you expected anything more from him, really. He’s not much for palemance, you knew that. And you know Fef is still angry with you, so silence is better than a break-up over Trollian.

But Tav’s online and he’s  _ignoring_  you. Wow, that stings. What kinda suicidal landdweller would dare get uppity with a deadly orphaner-prince of the high seas? (Besides Kar. And Vris. And Ter. And what’s-his-name that annoying pissblood psionic guy Kar’s always ranting about... Goddamnit.) Mr. Pleats is snuffling against your gills and your lead-in questions have done nothing. How are you supposed to ask about baby hoofbeast care now?

You make a mental note to trash him in your next FLARP campaign. Perhaps that’ll teach him to appreciate the you that was open-minded and sensitive enough to make quadrant jokes with lowblood landdwelling scum. You’ll defeat him so soundly he’ll burn so black for you it’ll be _unhealthy_ , and Nep’ll  _have_  to step in to make this a real club. He’d really regret stomping all over a prince’s friendship gesture then, wouldn’t he?

Hmph. You message Stuffy instead. Even though you were arguing over Nep just a while ago, you know he can’t resist a direct command.

CA: hey you

CA: stuffy lowwblood

CT: D--> What… did you just call me?

CA: i called you wwhat you are

CA: you landlubbers are all beneath me thats the COLD hard facts

CT: D--> Oh my goodness.

CT: D--> I mean. Yes sir, how may I be of service to one with such e%quisite royal b100d as yours?

CA: glad to see you knoww your place

CA: now tell me howw to take care of a baby hoofbeast

**Bee Equius:** Lift tiny barbells and (s)nicker.

Whoops. How does that keep happening? Careful now, or this'll turn into a running gag.

 **Be Equius:** You’re not sure that the seadweller understands that while he may be of colder blood than you, your alliance is to your landdwelling superiors. Perhaps you will find some form of military intelligence which you might relay to Makara. If the seadwellers are raising noble hoofbeasts, they are no doubt readying their cavalry for a land-terrorizing charge. It is your duty to be prepared. 


	11. rEVVELATIONS

**Nights in the future, but not many:**

Eridan settles down in front of his husktop. Mr. Pleats squirms in his arms, but Eridan deftly maneuvers both computer and feeding bottle. It’s like navigating a pirate ship in a storm – something he’s gotten used to.

Mr. Pleats will need more lususmilk soon, though there should still be enough in the thermal hull to last at least two days and nights. Eridan idly wonders if Aurthour would better appreciate a ring or a pendant this time. Hmm. Perhaps the ring.

Eridan’s already pre-paid for the latest Shouty and Useless Lump vid that comes out tonight. Rumors and speculation have been flying all over the internet due to a comment made on Shouty’s Shoutbox that the next installment will feature a “guest”. Eridan has a bet riding on the “guest” being a ploy to test out a potential new star, that the new guy will be offered a position as a regular if fans like him enough.

Whatever it is, Shouty and UL’s fans have been going mad about it on the forums. There’s still some time to kill before the video launches – Eridan has it set to auto-play upon launch, and there’s no way he wants to spend it all trouncing forum idiots. All the same, he’d rather not leave his seat, not when Mr. Pleats has finally stopped squirming and settled for chin nuzzles.

So he checks Trollian. There is, strangely, a long message waiting for him. A reply to a conversation started some sun-cycles beforehand.

AT: oK, sO, fIRST, i WANTED TO APOLOGIZE FOR NOT REPLYING TO YOU BEFORE,,,

AT: tHAT WAS, pRETTY MUCH, a DICK MOVE ON MY PART BUT, i ALSO WANTED TO EXPLAIN WHY

AT: aND THAT’S BECAUSE I DIDN’T KNOW WHAT TO SAY, bECAUSE YOU WERE TALKING ABOUT A SHOUTY VID, aND SHOUTY HAD JUST, uM, oFFERED ME A JOB,,,

AT: wHICH LEADS TO MY SECOND POINT, wHICH IS ABOUT THE FACT THAT THE JOB OFFER IS DEFINITELY A THING THAT HAPPENED, eVEN THOUGH THAT SOUNDS UNBELIEVABLE,

AT: sINCE YOU ARE A SHOUTY FAN, aND YOU ALSO, dEFINITELY, kNOW WHAT I LOOK LIKE FROM FLARP, i WANTED TO TELL YOU BEFORE YOU GOT A NASTY SURPRISE, aND GOT GROSSED OUT BY ME, bEING IN THE PORN VID, oF THE PORN STAR YOU LIKE,

AT: tHAT’S, pRETTY MUCH ALL I WANTED TO SAY,,, fEEL FREE TO SKIP OVER THE, uH, pARTS WITH ME IN THEM

AT: oH,,, aND PLEASE DON’T TELL AC,,, i WANT TO TELL HER MYSELF, wHEN I’M READY,,,

What. What is this. What.

Eridan doesn’t have time to properly process the sheer WTFuckery of those words before the newest, long-awaited pre-paid video takes over his screen.

The scene opens up on a messy room. The camera pans from empty snack bags strewn on the floor to towers full of computer junk, and, finally, to a limp, pitiable troll flopped on the ground. Eridan takes in every knob, every pointed joint of UL’s pitiful too-thin frame. His pump squeezes as it always does; Tav’s confession gets shunted to the back of his mind.

Shouty enters the scene, all great sweeping arm movements and adorabloodthirsty rage. No sound again, but that’s all right. Eridan can imagine Shouty to be the type who yells out of concern, almost like a stern, no-nonsense lusus. Tav’s confession is completely forgotten.

Shouty manhandles the mostly unresponsive UL onto the couch and then bustles around,  _cleaning up after his moirail oh god so PALE_. UL shifts a bit, but then suddenly turns toward the door. Shouty has turned, too. Without sound, Eridan can only guess that someone has knocked.

UL shuffles behind as Shouty goes to open the door. The camera zooms in on their guest, a shy looking troll with awkward everything. Awkwardly large horns, awkward nerd-smile, adorably bad fashion sense… His lusus, a tiny fairy bull, hovers over his shoulder, making him look even younger. He awkwardly greets his friends and pulls things out of his bag… Fiduspawn cards in on hand, microwave grubcorn in the other.

Holy shit, they’re going to have a  _sleepover_ , how  _naughty_ …

He walks in and. Wings. God, those  _wings_. Eridan remembers that this is Tav he’s gawking at, but his stupid pale-struck brain can only think, ‘oh so he hit second pupation thats wwhy hes been missin on the flarp circuit lately’.

The new troll on screen is Tavros, no doubt about it, but it’s also a Tav that’s different from the one Eridan had only encountered IRL via FLARP. FLARPing Tav was awkward, sure, but he was also roleplaying, pretending to be tougher than he really was, a wiggler trying to fill the shoes of his storybook heroes. This Tav is just… so…  _sweet_. He cuddles his lusus and Eridan is lost.

Eridan didn’t  _mean_  to develop three pale crushes that weren’t his moirail! Oh glub. Oh carp.

His earfins droop. He clutches desperately at Mr. Pleats, who huffs at him that the bottle of lususmilk is finished.


	12. baby hoofbeast, clubbing

CA: fef

CA: fef you gotta moment?

CA: its maybe not urgent but 

CA: wwell its kinda important

CA: fef

CA: youre not ignoring me are you?

CC: -Erifin, I’m at )(ive. I’m answering. I couldn’t answer any faster. Was it reelly necessary to ask t)(e “are you ignoring me” question twenty seconds in? You know I don’t pike that question. You know neither of us pikes where it leads.

Sometimes Eridan is reelly exhausting, especially when he hits the “you’re not ignoring me, are you?” phase. That’s supposed to be all sorts of cute in pale porn, but it reelly doesn’t do anything for you. And you think maybe you want to _push_ at him until he knows betta. Maybe carve your reminders into his grubscars. _Match me. Match me and push back, damn you._ Eridan is exhausting, but this pitch pale vacillation on your part kind of scares you. You wonder if this is the tyrian coming to the shore. You’re strong and female and Eridan’s vicious and emotionally fragile. You could wreck him. On nights when he’s needy, which is almost always, you _want to_. How did you become responsible for him instead?

CA: saury

CA: reelly

Capitulation this fast without trying to wiggle out of it? Somefin must reelly be wrong.

CC: Okay, w)(y don’t you tell me about it? W)(atever it is?

CA: um 

CA: you have time for a trip to my hivve?

CC: Can you come )(ere this time?

CA: probably not i xcnhvidh

CA: aflkdvnacxohz

Now you reelly are worried. For him, and not just what you might want to do to him. Strangely, when Eridan reelly needs you, not just _thinks_ he needs you, you still like him pale.

CC: -Eridan? Are you okay?

CA: yeah saury mr pleats mouthed the keyboard

Mr. Pleats? The intrigue deepens.

CC: S)(ould I know w)(o Mr. Pleats is?

CA: if you come by i can introduce you

CA: theres some stuff i need to talk through and you can feed mr pleats

CA: hes wwarm an fuzzy an you wwont havve to lay eyes on any dirt eaters to pet him

Oooo)(! Eridan makes you so mad sometimes.

You’re intrigued.

...

...

...

You did not expect to get your moirallegiance auspisticized by a baby hoofbeast.


	13. Developments

**Bee Aradia: Fly.**

According to all known laws of aviation, there is no way a bee should be able to fly. Its wings are too small to get its fat little body off the ground. The bee, of course, flies anyway because bees don’t care what trolls think is impossible.

Bee Aradia especially doesn't care what trolls think. If she were aware of what trolls thought, she would think it's silly that a miscalculation from the pre-warp drive days of Alternian history is now being shitposted on the internet by troll youth. But, well, Bee Aradia doesn't even care what other bees think of her. She will make all the loop-de-loops she wants, even if they call her flight pattern inconsistent.

**Be Aradia: Fly.**

Aradia is a joyful troll.

She enjoys long moonlit flights and good food and the hedonistic sprawl of her moirail across her lap when she’s massaged his stress into so much jelly and he’s sort of oozed down into a bony purring pile of thoroughly papped satiation. (When Sollux is completely relaxed, she can feast her own eyes on his, revealed only like this, secondary eyelids retracting for the shortest of lazy blinks. What most trolls never realize is that Sollux doesn’t have red and blue eyes, he has red and blue secondary eyelids. Not that most warmbloods want to confess to weird seadweller junk, but it’s not that rare to have the wrong teeth or ears or eyes or skin for land. His eyes are gray and yellow like everyone else’s, but his powers are so bright shining through his eyelids that they make his glasses glow. His trust, the intimacy of it, makes her lean down and gently, so gently, brush a kiss over each delicate bit of skin over vulnerable eyes. When his eyelashes flutter, it feels like a tiny flutterbug has kissed her back.)

Aradia enjoys a good fight and a good hunt and she doesn’t need to grind someone down to do it, but she likes winning, and doesn’t preclude hurting someone to do it, at least not if they’re really asking for it. She enjoyed the sweet whiplash of Karkat Vantas reacting to a pale brow kiss that almost sent him swooning into her arms. She expects to thoroughly enjoy her stint in pale porn production.

She flies herself out that night to see a sweet kid that dropped out of FLARP when his more aggressive partner died. Andrei is green, has absolutely huge symmetrical arching horns that will either be the death of him or forecast an as-yet-unmaterialized growth spurt of massive proportions. He also has the cutest, tiniest lusus outside of Tinkerbull. And he’s so shy there’s no way he’ll try to off Karkat. This is important, because Karkat Vantas is quite possibly the most provocative troll she knows, but he’s also a friend and now a revenue source.

The friend part is the most important, but she’s a rust and her allowance has always been designed to make her live off the land or otherwise supplement her income. There are more rusts than any other caste. Rusts have the highest mortality on Alternia, even accounting for their prevalence in the population at large. Somewhere, at a policy level far above anything publicized down here, someone decided that the rusts should reach Ascension already winnowed. Aradia has every intention of being a winnower and not a winnowee, should it becomes necessary. She pokes through her neglected cold storage, extracts an aromatic bunch of once-herbs that are more withered than rotting and packs them as a snack for PillbugDad.

One more vote for Andrei Rrolli? His hobby is making overly large plush stuffed animals. She might have to be creative about moving all his stuff, she might have to convince a few of Sollux’s neighbors to relocate, but it will be worth it once she gets him moved in at the main hive, even if he never blushes his way across a camera field.

She’s never felt particularly territorial about her own hive, but she’s starting to get a certain feeling about the main hive, the place where her moirail and pale-pitch-ash crush and co-conspirator live. It’s a good feeling, fierce and rumbling. Resonant. Potentially dangerous. Joyful.

As she races through the air with the odd swoop and whoop for the heck of it, she doesn't really notice that the resonance has dropped a pitch or two in the last few nights. She mostly wears skirts and shorts and tee-shirts, comfortable boots. If she's gained a few thumblengths of height or horn over the past perigee, she hasn't really noticed, reflexes briefly awkward and then smooth and practiced again. Of course, rusts mature just a bit faster so it's not really a surprise that she's the first among her clade to be hitting the first of several growth spurts heralding adulthood sweeps away.

If one were to poll Aradia's past FLARPing crew, allies and otherwise, and perhaps venture to take wagers, one might find oneself holding high odds that Megido mature into a terrifying and compellingly attractive bruiser of a tank. In this case, the masses would not be wrong. There is, of course, that strange troll obsession with badassery.

One might say that Megido has it in spades.

But then one would have to ask, with whom?

...

Somewhere a fishy fin twitches and its owner sneezes. 

Kelpchoo!

Coincidence of course. 

It's clearly hoofbeast allergies. 


	14. How the Hell did such a tiny lusus...?

**Be a Rrolli Ppolli Love Bug** : Um. No.

 **Be Andrei Rrolli** : That is a more modest proposal and perhaps you won’t be forced to decide between killing the witnesses to your shame or performing a quaint self-extinguishment ritual while singing the song of your people to the callous stars…

Not that you’re dramatic like some people. You wait half a beat for a grand gesture to sally forth with dramatic intensity to a coordinated stage cry. Only silence. Fernly Poplin is dead, and you haven’t been out much since, with one exception. Things have been quiet for perigees.

_Goodnight sweet brown, and flights of angelfish sing you to your rest._

Fernly was always far too fond of old seatroll ballads.

You submit your food staples and supplies order for the delivery drones, thankful for your status as a green. Yellows pay more, browns can barely get delivery. You suppose jades and teals might not notice the convenience for its ubiquity. But that is a lie. Most trolls have at least one associate outside their caste. Many a neighboring moirail orders for their own to share the delivery codes of a higher caste. You used to do as much for Fernly, for all that you were FLARPing partners and not formal clade.

A troll may be judged by the quality of their friends and enemies. You have no quadrants, and have in your life only had one true enemy, for the space of half a night. Your enemy is dead. You are enough of a troll to have seen to that.

No one needs to know that you can still see Anessa Patkip’s panicked face and hear her groans as she died. You are not _enough_ of a troll, since you vomited directly after and haven’t been able to hunt since. But that is a secret and your small hobby business combined with your caste code and careful budgeting sees to your needs without needing to resume hunting. No one loved or hated Anessa enough to want revenge. You would think that that is in its own way a sadness, but you mostly just feel empty when you think of her. Empty. Guilty. Angry. You don’t like feeling the last two, so you’ve mostly just felt empty.

You shut your portable husktop, slipping it into your travel bag, resettling the bag as PillbugDad squirms out from under the addition. You help him down and he scurries up your leg and back, perches on your shoulder. You turn your head to him and stroke a finger down the plates of his back and feel one of his legs stroke your face back. Dad understands.

He understands why, even with your massive stash of materials and back orders that make it effectively impossible to move without taking a significant financial blow, you have to keep your go-bag packed and you still order Fernly’s disgusting seaweed snacks. Grief and guilt are weights and you try to balance them so that if you are slow to move, you still move, and if you are carrying a hole within you, you have not yet fallen into it. Imploded. Here would have lain Rrolli, but he curled so tightly he disappeared.

You pick up your scissors and continue cutting along the lines you traced earlier. Your work table is precisely calibrated for your standing height, and you paid extra for the ratcheting leg extensions so it will last as you grow, until Ascension. If such things still matter, no doubt you will find another aspiring crafttroll of some sort and sell it along, the whole of it, your tools and fabric stash and set-up, moving along the digestive track of Alternia, the tail-eating slitherlizard of the strange wiggler economy. Then again, some of your comfort items find their way to the Fleet. You are, by nature, usually quite discreet.

You can manage one to two complete projects a night and more if you’re doing assembly line non-custom work. For the first perigee after, you just sewed an endless supply of slitherlizards, one after another, embroidering dozens of nonsense patterns, the weeds outside your FLARPing base, the secret position of the stars over the nearest city, only visible on new moons with power outages, the shy elusive wooly brook-trout that were the only thing for which Fernly could sit still and be quiet for a glimpse or slow petting. You sold them all, and maybe it helped and maybe it didn’t. SlitherMom left to get a new grub last perigee.

You walked her most of the way to the caverns and as dawn broke each day outside your tent she’d sing a soft hissing lullaby about cool dark holes and strong moonlight and the secrets of poison, brewed in the aching of teeth and grublove. Dad would join the descent with a bit about the lovely undersides of logs and damp leaves. _Hide, hide, hide, choose your moment to strike._ SlitherMom has moved on. Dad misses her too.

There’s a knock on your hive door. That’s odd, and probably bad. You shrug a bit, assuring yourself that your decoy shears are in their holster and your seamrippers are all in place. Why can’t people just stick to webchats? The outside is dangerous, unpredictable, and full of dirt.

You check the window and at least it’s not a drone. It’s hard to mistake Megido’s silhouette for anything else. You don’t relax, you still don’t know _why_ she’s here, even if she’s usually not particularly aggressive for a female FLARPer. She’s a midlevel psionic, unfailingly practical, and knows your strifekind and tiny psionic sparks. If she wants you dead, you’re dead and just don’t know it yet. You find yourself feeling a bit lighter at that.

It takes effort to go through each night, will to make food and eat food and check for orders, ship orders. The only thing that doesn’t feel heavy is the cutting and sewing, both complicated enough to absorb your thoughts through yet another identical night. One way or another, tonight will not be the _same_.

-

Andrei answers his hive door and quite frankly you’ve seen dead people in better condition. He’s meticulously laundered, not a speck of sopor or dirt visible, and he’s sort of wrinkled all over, clothes to rumpled hair, to the new lines between his brows. His tool belt is twisted and a lone marking stick is making a slow break for it down his leg, leaving a thin white line.

“What.” In anyone else, that would be rude or aggressive, but Andrei is just not very effusive outside of FLARPing mode.

“I have a business proposition for you, Rrolli. May I come in?”

He looks at you like he might fall asleep right there, mostly apathetic, but you know him well enough to know that's his default expression. He shrugs and steps back, turns far enough to not be blocking you or quite turning his back to you, neither aggressive nor entirely trusting, the long back-flung arc of his horns still facing mostly away from you as he keeps you in his peripheral vision.

Rrolli is practical and also a bundle of contradictions. It’s a good thing you like riddles. And rumpled boys. You grin a little at the thought of shoving Sollux in a tub and leaving Andrei to remind him what soap is for. Even looking like death warmed over, he’s still bathing, and his hive is dusty but organized.

PillbugDad waves a leg at you and you grin and wave back.


End file.
